This weeks interesting ship is the Ile De Sein. Built in 2001, the vessel is owned by the telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent and has been used for such jobs as part of a project to lay 9,000 kilometres of submarine cable between Sydney and Hawaii.

Today, however, the vessel was contracted by the the French aviation accident investigation bureau to recover the wreckage of the Air France passenger jet that crashed in the mid-Atlantic in 2009 on a trip from Rio de Janeiro and Paris. The wreckage had been found at a depth of 3,900 meters earlier this week.

The goal of the operation is to recover the flight recorders and other clues from the wreckage to determine the cause of the accident. To compelete its mission, the vessel will be assisted by an ROV provided by Phoenix International Inc, a U.S. company.